Getting in Our Own Way
One of the most overlooked reasons change efforts fail—or feel harder than they need to—is that the people leading them underestimate their power to influence the outcome. In subtle ways, they get in their own way.
I was reminded of this recently when I stumbled into one of my own blind spots. The day had started well. I’d finished my most important tasks and was feeling proud and productive. Then, after a short call with a potential partner who said “no” to an idea I’d pitched, my mood plummeted.
The “no” wasn’t the real problem. The problem was the flood of automatic negative thoughts that followed:
This was a stupid idea.
You should give up.
Now you’re really stuck. What are you going to do now?
You get the gist.
Those thoughts tumbled around in my head all afternoon—while I drove home, made dinner, and cleaned up afterward. Eventually, I sat down and decided to coach myself through it using a technique from cognitive coaching.
First, I named what I was feeling and to what degree:
Depressed – 70%
Anxious – 60%
Dejected – 80%
Embarrassed – 90%
Then I wrote down all the thoughts I’d been spinning on. On paper, they looked flimsy—almost silly. In my head, they had felt entirely true.
Next, I compared my notes to a list of common thinking traps, or “cognitive distortions”: fortune-telling, mind-reading, black-and-white thinking, magnification, personalization. I checked off several.
Finally, I began to reframe them:
This idea didn’t cost anything—you can’t know unless you try.
This person just wasn’t interested in this particular idea, and that’s okay.
You’ll have other ideas. You can always create more options.
By the end of this short reflection, I felt noticeably lighter—more balanced and calm.
Then, about an hour later, I realized I’d missed something big: emotional reasoning.
I had been treating my feelings as proof that my idea was bad and that I had failed. This one is subtle and sneaky because emotions do carry useful information. But if we let them take the wheel, they can easily distort our judgment.
This is especially true when we’re leading change. Often, we don’t have clear data to confirm whether we’re on the right track. There’s uncertainty, complexity, and plenty of noise. In that space, it’s tempting to rely on our emotions as a primary source of feedback about how things are going.
Emotional data matters—but it’s incomplete.
It’s like running a marathon. Discomfort is inevitable, but it’s not always a signal to stop. Runners learn to recognize different kinds of pain: the kind that warns of injury and the kind that simply comes with endurance. The skill lies in noticing, pausing, and discerning what the discomfort is really telling you.
Leading change requires that same kind of mental endurance. If we react too quickly to discomfort—if we take frustration or discouragement at face value—we can easily undermine our own efforts. We might jump to a premature conclusion, damage a relationship, or abandon an idea that just needed more time.
But when we pause and reflect, we often find the problem is smaller and more solvable than it first appeared. Once I took that pause, I could see plenty of paths forward. The “no” I’d received was just one data point—one mile marker—not the finish line.
When have you let your inner critic convince you to turn back too soon? What helped you keep going? I’d love to hear your experiences—please add to the comments below.
